Saturday, December 31, 2011

I am packing up the car and
leaving to visit an out-of-town friend who is recuperating after back
surgery.

I won’t be posting anything
while I’m away. I’ll just be enjoying
the company of my friend and recounting old times.

So, here’s wishing my readers
more happiness than all my words can tell you.
May 2012 be a happy new year free from want and filled with blessings
from God.

UPDATE: January 1, 2012 at 5:22AM—I became quite ill just after posting my wish for everyone to enjoy their New Year's Eve celebrations and phoned my friend to say I was sick and thought it wiser to stay home and not spread my cooties.

I went to an urgent care facility, not an emergency room, because it was Saturday and no doctors in private practice operate on the weekend. After having spent nearly three hours waiting to be seen, the doctor informed me that I have a sinus infection and bronchitis.

I was given a prescription for Levaquin (antibiotic) and Tussionex Suspension (cough medicine with codeine). Over the past year, I've had two bouts of pneumonia; once in April and again in September. Before you ask, yes, I've had my annual flu shot and because I have diabetes, I've also had my pneumonia vaccination.

I'm looking forward to feeling better and would really like it if I wouldn't get sick again any time soon.

Monday, December 26, 2011

When I was
much, much younger I avoided watching the retrospectives on television of the
year just passed. I remember not the
year but the emotion such broadcasts evoked and I gave up watching them. Being young I chose to attend New Year’s Eve
parties where everyone waited with baited breath for the ball to drop in New
York City—the iconic symbol of the year ending and the hope for the New Year
beginning.

Everyone would
join hands and unite in singing Auld Lang
Syne, but do we really know its meaning?
Should those we knew and loved be forgotten and never thought of
again? Should old times be
forgotten? The lyrics say we
shouldn’t. We’ll remember those times
and those people. We’ll raise a toast to
them. We’ll keep them close and we’ll
remember those who won’t be entering the New Year with us.

In the
YouTube® video I created, which is embedded below, I chose pictures that
captured the soul of a moment in time; happiness or sadness, celebration or
sympathy.

From the
horrifying earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan to the Tucson shootings
that shocked our nation, from the tornadoes that cut a swath of destruction and
death in Alabama and Missouri to the love story of Will and Kate, from the
uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya to the shocking deaths at the Indiana
State Fair, from the launch of NASA’s last space shuttle to the solemnity of
the 10th anniversary of September 11th, it represents a
reflection of the passing year.

Interspersed
throughout the video are photos of notable persons who left their mark on the world. I chose pictures that were flattering because
that’s the way I wanted to remember them.
I’ve also included photos of jubilant military servicemen returning home
from war. We owe them so much. And we should pause to remember those not
coming home.

So, we’ll take
a cup o’ kindness yet, for Auld Lang Syne.

Happy New Year everyone.
Happy New Year and thank you for your readership.

Friday, December 23, 2011

I don’t
remember how old I was when the magic of Santa was almost destroyed. My father took me to a shopping
mall to visit the jolly old elf. I
remember sitting on his lap and seeing a shiny piece of scotch tape stretched
across his white mustache.

On the way
home in the car, Dad asked if I had told Santa what I wanted for
Christmas. I told him I hadn’t which
prompted him to ask me why.

“Dad,” I said,
“That wasn’t the real Santa.”

“What makes
you say that honey?” he asked.

Pointing to
the fact that Santa had scotch tape on his mustache brought an awful silence
from the man who only wanted me to believe in the childhood joy of Christmas.

In the days
following my visit to this “fake” Santa, neither one of us broached the subject.

Weeks later it
was finally Christmas Eve and, like all parents, mine urged me to hit the silks
so Santa would come and bring my presents.
I obeyed, but I knew Santa was a grown-up hoax.

My bedroom
door opened into the hallway. There was
an opening in the ceiling to the attic just a few feet from my door.

When I awoke
on Christmas morning, there, in front of my door was a chair (one of those that
have a set of steps that can be lowered and raised) that Dad had carefully
placed underneath the opening.

I looked
up to see that the cover to the opening had been moved to one side. As I looked down at the chair, it became
clear that Santa had come through the attic (we didn’t have a fireplace).

There on the
seat of the chair, Dad had carefully arranged a dusting of dirt that outlined
where a large boot had been.

In that
instant, I knew that Santa was real and the guy in the suit at the shopping
mall never entered my mind again. The
magic of St. Nick was real again. It has
been so ever since.

My father has
been gone since 2006. I will never
forget what my father did that Christmas.
Because of him I still believe.

From the
Associated Press comes
this heartening news: Year after
year, Santa Claus survives the scoffers and the Scrooges and the 6-year-old
playground skeptics. He endures belittling commercials that portray him
shopping at Target or taking directions from an iPhone. He shrugs off scolds
who say his bagful of toys overshadows the reason for the season.

Two-thirds of
parents with kids under eighteen say Santa's an important part of their
celebrations this year. Moms, especially, have a soft spot for the man in red—71
percent of them say he's important, and that's a big jump from 58 percent just
five years ago.

His overall
popularity is up slightly from an AP-AOL poll in 2006, before the recession
hit. In these bleaker times of homes lost to foreclosure and parents sweating
out their next paychecks, the poll shows Santa riding high with families both
wealthy and poor.

In the poll,
the median age when adults said they outgrew Santa was 8. But Santa needn't
worry. They'll come back someday…when they're parents.

Dad, thanks
for the beautiful memory.Linked at The Pirate's Cove. Thank you, "Admiral."

Thursday, December 22, 2011

In what can only be described as a “nightmare before Christmas,” Speaker of the House John Boehner conceded to Senate Democrats over the
expiring payroll tax cut.

Friday, after the bill passes, Captain Humility will sign the
bill and board Air Force One with Bo, the family dog (undoubtedly flown back to
Washington at taxpayer expense for a showdown photo-op) to join the First Family in Hawaii.

All the back-biting over the past week or so means that the
payroll tax cut which is worth an astonishing $40 on the average paycheck will continue
through February 2012. Jobless benefits
will also continue and the “doc fix” which prevents a proposed 27.4% pay cut for
physicians serving Medicare patients will not take effect on January 1, 2012.

Democrats are pissing their pants with glee over having won
the battle, but a two-month band-aid will only create more uncertainty for
families and businesses that create jobs and shackle economic growth.

During his news conference, when
asked if House Republicans “caved”, Boehner said, “Sometimes it’s hard to
do the right thing. It may not have
politically been the smartest thing in the world, but I’m gonna tell you what,
our members waged a good fight.”

This was no good fight. They decided
to play politics with the XL Keystone Pipeline as a strategy to win favor with
Americans. Their calculus was flawed
and now they’ve damaged the Republican brand.
How badly? Only time will tell.

So enjoy your forty bucks.

Incidentally, the Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a budget in
1,346 days; something they are required by law to do each and every April 15th. Throw
Them All Out.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Christian Adams, reporting atPJ Tatler, has heard “that PJ Media will run a story in the next 36
hours revealing bombshell instances of lying under penalty of perjury at the
Justice Department. I hear it involves criminal acts, and also,
strangely, implicates congressional redistricting among other matters.
Stay turned to PJ Media for details.”

UPDATE I: December 22, 2011

The Justice Department
Condones Perjury…Again

Hans A. von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage
Foundation and former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission reports
that throughout 2005-2007, numerous attorney-client privileged documents,
confidential personnel information, and other sensitive legal materials were
leaked from inside the Voting Section to the Washington Post and various left-wing blogs.

Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, a career employee in the Voting
Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury
on three occasions, sources say. Despite
the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance; in fact, she
has not been disciplined in any meaningful way.

Ms. Gyamfi is
one of the most extreme partisans in the Civil Rights Division, no small
distinction considering the competition among her Division colleagues. (Readers
of Christian Adams’ recent book, Injustice,
may recall seeing photos of Ms. Gyamfi’s Voting Section office walls filled
with campaign signage supporting the election of Barack Obama.)

Christian
Adams has
more on the culture of lies inside the Obama Justice Department. He connects Assistant Attorney General Ronald
Weich to false statements given to Congress on both the Fast and Furious and
the New Black Panther scandals.

One thing is
clear, the Judiciary and Oversight committees in both chambers of Congress need
to immediately get to the bottom of
this.

Do you suck at
wrapping Christmas gifts? Did you forget
to buy gift tags for those Secret Santa gifts?
Is there someone in your family you just love to annoy?

Look no
further than the “Romney for President” gift tags. Mitt’s crackerjack campaign strategy for the
Yuletide Season is to have you personalize your gifts and show your support
with Romney
holiday gift tags.

Just download
the templates, cut and fold, add some ribbon, don’t forget to personalize it,
tie it onto the gift and voila, you’ve got a gift that will speak volumes about
your political savvy. See example
pictured above.

In an ad
titled "Home for the Holidays: Share
Why You're Working to Re-elect President Obama," the campaign provides
ideas on how to spread the good news of Captain Humility.

These children
of the corn tout The Won as a politician of “my generation”. Each one shows a series of family photos and
rattle off “accomplishments” of their favorite community organizer while suggesting
that you look on YouTube™ and Facebook. “He
just made a great speech in Kansas,” one says.
“Maybe they’ll see what you’re doing and want to follow.”

I’m not going
to link that garbage on my blog, but if you want to see the creepy video, it’s here.

Sen.
Tom Coburn (R-OK) released his annual
“Wastebook” detailing $6.5 billion in ludicrous government spending
including $765,000 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

Would you like
a smoke and a pancake? You know, flapjack and a cigarette? No? All right. Cigar
and a waffle? No? Pipe and a crepe? No? Bong and a blintz? No? Oh, well, then
there is no pleasing you.

The items on
Coburn's list include $10 million for a remake of "Sesame Street" for
Pakistan and $764,825 to examine how college students use mobile devices for
social networking.

The
"Wastebook" also claims $550,000 was spent for a documentary about
how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as
$48,700 for a festival promoting Hawaii's chocolate industry.

Coburn
said, “This is not a Christmas wish list, these are just some of the ways the
federal government spent your tax dollars.”

"Instead
of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to
our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion," Coburn said adding, "perhaps
there was no bigger waste of the taxpayer's money in 2011 than Congress
itself."

They ignored the fact that the
Ryan plan would not affect people currently in Medicare—or even the people 55
to 65 who would join the program in the next 10 years.

They used harsh terms such as "end" and "kill" when the
program would still exist, although in a privatized system.

They used pictures and video of
elderly people who clearly were too old to be affected by the Ryan plan. The
DCCC video that aired four days after the vote featured an elderly man who had
to take a job as a stripper to pay his medical bills.

"Both parties use entitlements as political weapons," Ryan said in an
interview with PolitiFact. "Republicans do it to Democrats; Democrats do
it to Republicans. So I knew that this would be a political weapon that the
other side would use against us."

Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted
to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos,
and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

"According to (PolitiFact's) logic, if the FBI were replaced with a
voucher program wherein citizens would receive subsidies for hiring private
investigators to look into criminal activity, but the agency running the
voucher program were still called the FBI, it would be unfair to say that the
FBI had been ended," wrote Jed Lewison for Daily Kos. "I
guess it's their right to make that argument, but it's transparently
absurd."

In a blog post, the DCCC stood by its claim, saying the ad accurately
stated Ryan's plan would “abolish” Medicare.

Many
conservative blogs have seized on the recent 60 Minutes interview of President Obama by CBS’s Steve Kroft. The focus of the interview was not the televised
version—rather the comment that, as it turned out, was an outtake at the end of
the recorded interview.

"As you
yourself said, Steve, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments
in our first two years against any president—with the possible exceptions of
Johnson, FDR and Lincoln. You know, just in terms of what we've gotten done in
modern history," Obama said, according to the aforementioned clip that
never made it to broadcast.

I get the fact
that this megalomaniacal, narcissistic sociopath believes he saved us from a
great depression. I get that this is all
part of The Won’s legendary humility, but really…the fourth best president
evah?

I am reminded
of the 1992 Republican
National Convention at which former President Ronald Reagan said, “Well,
let me tell you something; I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine and,
Governor…You're no Thomas Jefferson!”

Charles
Krauthammer offered
some sage advice for Captain Humility:
“When a Roman conquering general returned and had a triumphal procession
in Rome, with the crowds cheering and calling him all kinds of godly names,
there was a courtier in the back of the chariot who whispered in his ear, ‘Remember
thou art but a mortal.’ Obama ought to
hire that guy. He’s old, but I think he’s
still around.”

Monday, December 19, 2011

Carlson
donated $2,500 to the Illinois Humanities Council for the honor of supping on a
home-cooked meal at the Illinois home of Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn—both
unrepentant leaders of the terrorist [group] Weather Underground.

“I bought the
auction dinner because I support the important work of the Illinois Humanities
Council,” Carlson emailed The Chicago Tribune. “Anything I can do to help.”

Conservatives slammed Barack
Obama during the 2008 presidential race for his association with Ayers.
Arizona Sen. John McCain’s running mate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin,
famously knocked Obama on the stump for “palling around with terrorists.” While
she didn’t mention Ayers by name, it was widely understood that is who she was
referring to.

Carlson’s
winning dinner bid entitles him to bring
up to six people. The dinner must be arranged at a mutually agreed-upon
date before October 2012.

Congressman Darrell
Issa (R-CA), questions US Attorney General Eric Holder as he testifies before
the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC, December 8, 2011. Holder faced
a congressional hearing over a scandal which allowed US weapons to find their
way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

A New York
Times piece, A
Lightning Rod Is Undeterred, begins:
“For nearly three years, Republicans have attacked Attorney General Eric
H. Holder Jr. on national security and civil rights issues. For months, they
have criticized him over a gun-trafficking investigation gone awry, with dozens
of leaders calling for his resignation. Last week, more than 75 members of
Congress co-sponsored a House resolution expressing “no confidence” in his
leadership.”

The nation’s
chief law enforcement officer contends that many of his critics are playing “Washington
gotcha games”.

Mr. Holder
believes the strong opposition is merely political fodder. “This is a way to get at the president
because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our
relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American,” he
said.

It couldn’t be
because they both have a penchant for blaming others for their colossal
failures. Nah. That couldn’t be it.

Kim Jong Il,
the jumpsuit and platform shoe-wearing tyrant died of a heart attack while on a
train trip according to state television—that’s the apparatchik to you and me.

Reportedly a
diabetic, the little man with a towering ego, amassed a wine cellar with more
than 10,000 bottles and greedily scoffed down prodigious amounts of lobster and
expensive cognac.

Lobster ranks
as one of the most decadent items on a menu and is also known to be high in
cholesterol. What condiment usually accompanies
lobster? Butter. Butter is also high in cholesterol, with about 35 mg of
cholesterol per tablespoon. One in four
people with diabetes will suffer a heart attack or
stroke.

On a serious
note, South Koreans are
naturally extremely nervous since, despite there being 26,500 US troops in the country;
North Korea has thousands of artillery rockets aimed at Seoul which is only 70
miles from the internal border. North Korea is also nuclear armed, the main
reason why everyone treats this nightmare of a state so gingerly. The Japanese
government will be monitoring the situation closely. Indeed they will.

Former U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban, center, greet each other after unveiling the new statue of late US
President Ronald Reagan, during a centennial commemoration in Budapest, Hungary,
Wednesday, June 29, 2011. The bronze statue honors Reagan at the Freedom Square
in central Budapest to mark his efforts to free the people of Hungary from the
yoke of communism.

During the
interview Rice emphatically stated, “I love being a university professor. I’m not interested in being vice
president. I’m a policy person not a
politician.”

On Sunday,
December 18, 2011, Joseph Curl offered
his conjecture that Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the
political game.

Curl writes, “…her
selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of
Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any
political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that
the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in
the first place.”

[SNIP]

“Clearly, the
2012 election is shaping up to be all about the U.S. economy. Everything Mr.
Obama has tried has failed, so American voters are looking for someone who can
actually fix the problems. But what the Republican presidential hopefuls lack
is foreign policy experience.”

“Cue Miss
Rice. With Vladimir Putin set to reascend to the Russian presidency, the Soviet
scholar is perfectly suited for what’s coming next.”

[SNIP]

“There are a
few other women available as down-ticket choices: Rep. Michele Bachmann will
certainly be considered, as will Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor who
last week endorsed Mitt Romney. But nearly no one on the Republican side—man or
woman—can deliver what Miss Rice can. And while you haven’t yet heard her name
when the political pundits tick off the top tier of vice-presidential players,
you’re about to. Starting today.”

From the Denver Post’s First and Orange blog,
we learn that the Denver Broncos are preparing for a media horde at Sports Authority
Field at Mile High as the Broncos host the New England Patriots. Game coverage begins at 4:15PM ET on CBS.

The team has
issued some 1,300 media credentials—double the number of a typical regular
season home game.

If, if the Broncos can
contain Tom Brady and the Patriots, the craze of “tebowing” is certain to reach
a higher echelon.

Tim Tebow’s public
acknowledgment of his faith has garnered strong opinions pro and con about him
within and outside the world of sports.

The last four wins, two of
which were in overtime, came after they trailed in the last two minutes of the
fourth quarter.

After
their win over Chicago last week, Tebow said, "If you believe, then
unbelievable things can sometimes be possible."

I’m
rooting for the Broncos. I hope Tebow
will continue to declare his Christian faith.
It’s what sports in America needs and kids should have a genuine role
model to emulate.

The Lincoln-Douglas style debate at
St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH was serene—tranquil in fact. The “debate” centered on foreign policy
issues.

Viewers were struck by the vast
knowledge both candidates possess on foreign affairs. Their approaches were levelheaded—a far cry
from those of Bachmann and Perry.

When the topic of Iran was raised,
Gingrich and Huntsman both agreed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran poses
the most serious threat to the US in the next decade.

Gingrich warned, “I want all of you to
think about how serious this is. A
movement which recruits its own children to learn how to be suicide bombers…to
blow themselves up in order to kill you is a movement that, with nuclear
weapons, would use them in a heartbeat because there’s no effective deterrent. If you’re determined that they not have
nuclear weapons, I believe you have to be ultimately for regime change, because
there’s no practical scenario in which you can take out their weapons systems
without them rebuilding them.”

The former Speaker of the House made
the dire prediction that if Iran does acquire nuclear weapons that a second
Holocaust would, almost certainly, be visited upon the people of Israel.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

The New
York Post’s Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein have reported that Rev. Al
Sharptongue is “deep in the red” according to documents obtained by The Post.

The mush-mouthed, über
liberal activist, legend-in-his-own-mind owes tons of money. Sharpton’s
National Action Network and two for-profit companies owe $880,000 in unpaid
federal payroll taxes, interest and penalties.
NAN also paid more than $100,000 to settle two lawsuits due to the
unpaid bills. In all, his empire is $5.3
million in the red according to public records and it still owed $202,252 in
loans for Bo-Spanky Consulting Inc. and Sharpton Media LLC.

The reverend was paid
$241,732 in salary and perks that included first-class or charter air travel,
yet he owes the Internal Revenue Service
$2.6 million in federal income tax and nearly $900,000 in state tax.

Way to go there, Al. With that kind of financial prowess you could
easily take over as Secretary of the Treasury from “Turbo
Tax Timmy” Geithner.

As I mentioned
in a previous
post, Saturday night’s GOP presidential debate was the first one I’ve been
able to watch live because I wasn’t working.

ABC, the
network that is finally
canning hermaphrodite Christiane Amanpour, trotted out Diane Sawyer and
little Georgie Stephanopoulos to be the moderators.

"Who is the most conservative of you
all?" asks little Georgie. Mitt
answers, "Speaker Gingrich and I have a lot of places where we
disagree..." “Why don't you name
them?” asked Stephanopoulos. "Er..."
Romney said and then proffered Gingrich’s idea about building bases on the
moon.

That set up one of the zingers of the night.
Gingrich looked askance at Mittens and said, “Let's be candid, the only reason
you didn't become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.”

The wise thing for Mittens to have done would have
been to let that one-two punch go, but he didn’t. “With regards to the idea that I had beaten
Ted Kennedy I’d have been a career politician, that’s probably true.” Can you say tailor-made line for a “not
Romney ad”?

I was
impressed with Michele Bachmann’s brilliant creation of the moniker “Newt
Romney” implying that Newt backed the individual mandate in healthcare as far
back as 1993. Romney tried to shut down that image by quickly adding, “I know Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich is a
friend. He and I are not clones. This Newt Romney thing we've got to get it out
of our minds.”

Besides the two zingers I’ve mentioned here, the
part of the debate that will resonate for a long while was when Rick Perry
throttled Mitt by saying, "I read your first book, and it said in there
that your mandate in Massachusetts, which should be the model for the country
... I'm just saying, you were for individual mandates, my friend."

Romney brazenly erred when he shot back at Perry
saying, “You’ve raised that before, Rick, and you’re simply wrong. Rick, I’ll tell you what: 10,000 bucks?
$10,000 bet?” That was the “oops”
moment of the night. That one’s
gonna leave a mark.

There was a mini-debate about Gingrich’s comment
that the Palestinians are an “invented” people which was Romney’s strongest
exchange of the evening.

The chattering
class is labeling this debate as a showdown between frontrunners Gingrich and
Romney.

For all
intents and purposes Bachman is no longer viable as the GOP nominee. Rick Perry seems unable, even after extensive
debate training, to quell doubts that he is presidential material and Ron Paul,
well, for me is discounted because of his untenable positions on Iran, the gold
standard and pork for his state.

Conservatives
will have tonight’s debate to take a closer look at Rick Santorum, Newt
Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

Will Newt lose
his cool if the shots from his opponents get lethal? Will Ron Paul continue to make quirky comments
in which he blames America for the attacks of September 11th? Will Michele Bachmann pursue the role of
ankle biter by being negative? Will
Santorum get the air time he needs to convey his message? Will Romney try to goad the “new Newt” into
some kind of gaffe, and more importantly, will he be able to defend himself
against his reversals and controversial positions especially since he is
perceived as “the father” of the Massachusetts model for Obamacare?

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The U.S.S.
Arizona Memorial floats gracefully over the sunken remains of the ship for which
it is named. It is a striking
visual. Every fifteen minutes, 150
visitors are ferried across the harbor to stand on the platform.

Over time the
memorial has suffered from the heavy traffic and the effects of time and the
elements.

When you stand
on the platform you are struck by the reverence with which the memorial was
constructed. It is, after all, the
gravesite of 1177 men. To this day, the
ship still weeps for her dead.

The Arizona
had 1.4 million gallons of fuel on board when she went down, and perhaps half a
million gallons remain. About a quart and a half a day bubbles up from below.
Pearl Harbor survivors call the seepage “black tears.” It’s eerie to see and,
in a strange way, a seemingly tangible connection to those who lie below.

When I visited
Pearl Harbor, I purchased a flag that had been flown from the memorial on
September 11th. I needn’t
tell you why I feel there’s a connection between the attack on Pearl Harbor and
the attack on America on September 11, 2001.

Today, about
120 survivors will join Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, military leaders and civilians
to observe a moment
of silence in Pearl Harbor at 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time—the moment the attack
began seven decades ago.